Lots of things have gone south in the last twenty four hours. Nothing much; just a little string of annoyances that seem like Marley’s chains dragging behind you. Impediments, not disasters.
Blogger keeps eating my words. You’d think I’d stop relying on it, but thinking only gets you into trouble — so knock it off. Hit publish and get file not found. Grrr. Mouse dies. You pick it up. Cursor races around the screen unwonted, then closes the browser. Grrr. Dehumidifier dies ten seconds after the warranty expires. Grrr. Poison Ivy. Grrr. Lumber yard bin is empty of the material you want. Grrr. More rain. Grrr. Wake up with a headache. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
The coffee’s good. My wife’s attentive. That’s good. And my son’s last day of fifth grade is today. He starred in an off-off-off-fairly far off Broadway production of The Boston Tea Party as John Hancock, along with the rest of his fifth grade class last night.
I had work to do. Grrr. I didn’t need the interruption. Grrrr. I had to hurry to the shower. Grrr. I stepped on a” Bionical” in the shower. GRRRRRRRRRR. Why do they leave that in the tub? Why not a nice soft rubber duckie? GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Hurry up dear. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
We’re seated. There will be a delay, the teacher mumbles inaudibly. GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
They were wonderful. All of them. We didn’t know whether to laugh, or smile, or cry, or beam, or brag, or applaud, or what. My little boy stood at the front of the stage like a trouper, and delivered his lines with verve and panache, and his friends were equally successful, and we all had a wonderful time.
It’s no wonder they love stories about pirates. Well, Patchy the Pirate, anyway, until they’re a little older. Then it’s Kidnapped; Swiss Family Robinson; Robinson Crusoe; Treasure Island; 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The Pirate Trial of Mary Bonny and Ann Read.
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow–a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest– Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
Robert Louis Stevenson-Treasure Island
Able seaman or corsair, the trusty locker is always there, for your Hot Wheels or Bratz or crayons if not your cutlass, doubloons, and sextant. And any kid needs a place for their treasures, someplace not too neat, where you can rummage around like a little attic looking for something you’ve forgotten to catch your eye and capture your interest. And so we make the box.
Can’t be too high from the floor to the lid, or the little one’s can’t reach in. Can’t be too low, or they tumble in while they’re fishing around in there.
The one drawer is the best part of this one. All the little bits and pieces of things that go to the bottome of the toy box and languish, unseen forever can go in the drawer and stay handy, and puzzles have a place to live too. Little ones love to operate drawers and doors and lids anyway, and so they can get busy with the drawer and the lid before they get busy for real.
We can make this out of poplar, an affordable hardwood that paints up well, or perhaps Eastern White Pine for lightness. Solid wood, we want to think about your kid’s kids. No plywood except maybe the drawer bottom. Egad, no particle board. Particle board furniture is junk, and always will be. It won’t hold a fastener. It disintegrates if it gets wet. It outgasses formaldehyde for a long time. It will be in the dumpster before it stops smelling like a glue factory and your kid is in junior high.
We’ll paint the exterior, and rough it up a bit, as it will get that way anyway, and might as well look like it’s been to Fiji and back right away. Inside, we’ll use the original lacquer- shellac. It’s interesting stuff; made from the discarded shell of an insect, the lac bug, the flakes gathered and dissolved in pure alcohol. Once it’s dry, it’s edible, so no worries about that. We’ll put an anti-slam closer on the top.
It needs a drawer pull and some sort of handles on the side. We’ll scour the hardware companies for just the right things. But that’s the thing, right there, at least in prototpe form. We need working drawings, and then we build a prototype to see if it’s any good, and tweak it if it’s not.
I love this picture. I love the Spanky style clothes, the leather shoes, the hissing radiator, the chipped basin, and man oh man, look at that cowlick. The poor little fellow isn’t going to get anywhere with that, though he’s giving it a go. Only momma’s spit can paste down a cowlick, and this poor little fellow’s mom had to go off to work, and leave him to wrestle his devil ears by himself. The year was 1943, and I imagine she’s making something for the armed forces, and the little fellow’s dad is too, or is in the armed forces.
And so he’s left in the care of someone barely visible on the right, and among his peers. I like watching my own sons pal around with their friends, and try to watch the proceedings without participating as much as possible. Your very presence intrudes, and staying in the background allows them to sort things out as much as possible among themselves. And it’s fun to watch them try to do things that you take for granted, but they’re still learning. The effort of it, and the satisfaction after is amusing. When they’re older, the mileposts of accomplishment get fewer and farther between, and instead of daily trophies, you get yearly diplomas.
Whoah, wait a minute. A daycare center for working mothers in 1943? That’s unpossible. I thought all you Stepford Wives were freed from domestic bondage in 1968 or so, when your 1950s Ozzie and Harriet manacles were finally broken. But there are hundreds of pictures like this in the Library of Congress, from all over the country, and innumerable picture of Rosie the Riveter to go along with it. ‘Splain it to me Lucy.
I’m going to make 100% of the audience angry now, which is hard to do. Usually, either 50.5% or 49.5% hate you for what you say. But I’m going for the whole enchilada today:
A. There was no evil man-plot to keep women out of the workplace before.
B. There was no evil government plot to destroy the family by ramming women into the workforce.
For all you folks that think we evil white men get together twice yearly and plan how we’re gonna oppress everybody, you need to look in our closets. We can’t dress ourselves without help, just like the little fellow pictured above. Secretly ruling the world is unlikely.
For all you folks that think it’s all a government plot to bring socialism to middle america on black helicopters, you need to visit the Post Office. Look around. The government can’t figure out what it’s doing. If you can barely tell what you’re trying to do, it’s unlikely you’re trying to wed it to an evil purpose.
It’s all, as Homer Simpson says, “just a bunch of stuff that happened.”
My wife stays home and cares for our children a little, and for me a lot. Many people see that as example “A” above. Not so. It suits us both, and our children, and we can, so we do.
Earlier in our lives, our oldest was shuffled off to daycare so we could both work, and many people saw “B” above. Well, we needed money. Half of it did go to the government, after all.
But he’s pretty well adjusted. He doesn’t recite “Let A Million Flowers Bloom” and scream ‘Death to the Capitalists” because he swapped germs with a dozen of his peers when he was two. And his mother gives him a whiffle in the summer, so no cowlick. In short, we all survived.
Then what are we to make of it? It easy:
A. We’re all rich
B. People are valuable.
Women work now because there’s a shortage of people. Women worked in 1943 because there was a shortage of people — of the male, induction age type. And women, like men, can be lured away from the joys of the home if it pays good enough. And since as the years pass, and the amount of heavy lifting required continues to diminish, and the jobs get more sophisticated and lucrative, and human ingenuity and sophistication becomes more important, employers must do everything they can to lure people into the workforce. Like pay the world. And overlook the occasional childbirth interruption.
People blithely say the world is overrun with people. Okay, smart guy, try putting an ad in the paper looking for help. Let’s say you’re fussy. You don’t want meth smoking child molesters or people that sleep at their desks. You’re gonna have to offer a lot to get anyone, and if you’re fool enough to exclude enormous swathes of the population because they’re, well, girls, you’re going to be sitting waiting for the phone to ring for a long time.
And we are all rich. Let’s not be ingrates and complain about opportunity in America. We have problems, because human beings are imperfect. But the largest problem among poor people here is obesity. Tell someone in central Africa that any of us is not rich, and they’ll likely disagree. And ask you for a dollar to eat for a month. We’re a rich enough nation to pay people to be poor, and get obese. That’s rich.
And so, some of us work outside the home. Some of us work from the home. Some of us work in the home. Some of us place our children with other children when they’re one or two. Some wait until they’re five. Some of us wipe bottoms. Some of us pay to have those bottoms wiped. Some people don’t work, because they have money, but ignore their children and leave it to nannies to take care of them. Some people work, and spend every waking hour left with their children.
The blessed sun returned yesterday, and we luxuriated outside, lulled by the gentle gurgle of the sump pump drainage hose. When the sun revealed itself, finally, the grass made one of those cartoon noises — something like: sproingggg, and grew three inches in three minutes. An enormous, silent osprey kited overhead, eying the children. If birds can do arithmetic, this one was. Let’s see, the little one weighs about thirty pounds, give or take, and I’ve never picked up a rabbit that big, but he’d feed a family of four raptors for four weeks, easy. But he looks kinda doughty, and might struggle. Let’s find a few chipmunks, what do you say?
The big son was out of the question, of course; that’s him mowing the lawn. The one barely three is the center of attention now, and charms us with his googoo and his antics. But the mellow ripening of the elder son into a little man is another whole enchilada of wonder for his father. I still can’t get over the idea that I have a child old enough and responsible enough to mow the lawn. I literally am in a kind of awe of him. He seems sometimes too good to be true.
I wonder if he’ll like me when he’s grown. A man newly minted likes to put some distance between himself and his father, generally. You are left wondering if whatever affection he might have for you will trump his desire for independence, and drive him to mow your lawn when you really need some one to, not just because it’s fun to watch him do it.
And yes, I’m writing this because I manifestly love that little boy and his even littler brother, and the mother that raises them to be as charming as they are — and because I’m too busy making furniture to finish the plan for the toybox today.
One thing I’ve noticed about the two boys — they eat a lot.
Month: June 2006
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Recent Comments